Entries in Facebook
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Image credit: FacebookFriends, Facebook has just taken facial recognition to a whole new level.

Through its overly-creepy-sounding project "DeepFace," Facebook has been exploring ways in which to improve its facial recognition software -- all the way to the point of "human-level performance." How? The new software maps a person's facial features in 3-D, then turns them into a flat model. The results are then filtered by color to highlight specific facial elements, such as nose or brow shape.

According to Facebook, their approach is 97.25 percent accurate, which is very close to human accuracy levels. In fact, there are only a few factors keeping software from exceeding human facial verification accuracy, including lighting, expression, pose and image quality. However, with enough time perhaps Facebook's DeepFace team can overcome even those.

For now, Facebook users won't be impacted by the new software. First, it's heading to the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in June to be vetted by other researchers, then it will probably have to face the music with privacy advocates. How exactly will Facebook then use the software? We're not entirely sure, but it's probably safe to assume that facial recognition this powerful probably won't be used only for tagging people in uploaded photos.

Today Facebook announced new smartphone software that will put social-networking right on a smartphone's home screen, doing away with that whole pesky Facebook app thing.

The new software, called Home, makes it easier than ever to see your Facebook news feed, as well as friends' profiles, photos and more. (Not to mention the fact that Zuckerberg and his team will now be able to sell ad space on your home page.) Home will be available April 12 on Samsung and HTC phones that run Android.

“The problem with apps is they’re a click away from wherever you are,” Carl Howe, an analyst at Yankee Group, told Bloomberg. “Facebook wants to remove that barrier.”

Is this just the next step toward a Facebook phone? Maybe. In the meantime, now our social media obsession is even closer at hand.

Facebook is now testing its own self-destructing message app, much like Snapchat. The popular app allows users to send temporary photo messages, which "self-destruct" after a given amount of time.

Sources reveal that Facebook plans to launch the app in the coming weeks, before the end of the year.

If the Facebook message app works like Snapchat, then the user sending a photo gets to choose the amount of time that the photo is available for viewing. Once the receiving user has viewed the pic for the given amount of time, the photo deletes itself, from both users' phones. Simultaneously, Snapchat deletes the photo from its serves. (I'm sure we can trust Facebook to do the same thing, right?)

Snapchat recently added video capabilities, as AllThingsD reports here. Somehow, the idea of a bunch of tweens sending self-destructing photos and video feels a little bit icky. Here's hoping their intentions are noble, though. As for us, we'll just be using it to send catty messages about our coworkers.

As you're sitting at your desk today, are you wondering how many Americans are out there voting in the presidential election, at any given moment? Well, Facebook has unveiled a heat map that tracks where its users are voting, in real time. Check it out here.

There are also options to see age and gender trends of voters across the country.

Interesting? Yes. Capable of telling us who's ahead? Nope. But it's interesting to see social media getting into the mix today.